The City Of Your Final Destination

James (Remains of the Day, Howard’s End, A Room with a View) Ivory’s latest film is an adaptation by long-time collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala of Peter Cameron’s 2002 novel.

It’s a gently witty tale of a young Iranian-American doctoral student who’s determined to write the authorized biography of Jules Gund, a dead Uruguayan novelist. Both Omar (Omar Metwally) and his girlfriend Deirdre (Alexandra Maria Lara) are academics. Omar has won a grant to write the author’s biography, but when the novelist’s family turns down Omar’s request, his teaching job is in jeopardy. Desperate, Omar travels to the family’s crumbling estate, Ocho Rios, to petition the author’s three executors in person: Gund’s widow Caroline (Laura Linney); his much younger mistress, the waiflike recluse Arden (Charlotte Gainsbourg); and his brother Adam (Anthony Hopkins), a gentleman of leisure who lives on the estate with his much younger lover Pete (Hiroyuki Sanada). Omar is welcomed into the home, but he’s made no promises, and his arrival sets in motion a series of events that upsets the precarious financial and emotional equilibria.